PANJIM: Chief Minister Pramod Sawant on Monday said that he will serve legal notice on Goa Forward Party (GFP) President and Fatorda MLA Vijai Sardesai for alleging thousands of crores worth of scam in the Town and Country Planning (TCP) Department by allowing applications under Section 16B of TCP Act and the Chief Minister’s alleged involvement in the same.

Sawant said that Vijai himself was a former TCP Minister and knows quite well that the TCP Department files don’t go to the Chief Minister.

“The TCP Department files never come to the Chief Minister. Vijai is aware of it and unnecessarily trying to divert the attention of the public. I will get legal notice served on him and also get detailed inquiry done in the matter,” he said.

Reacting to it, Vijai said that he will reply to the legal notice when he receives it.

“Let him (CM) send me a legal notice and I will respond to it after I get a legal notice,” he said.

Vijai said that when he had brought Section 16B of the TCP Act, only 32 applications were submitted to the department and after he was dropped from the Ministry, more than 7,700 applications were allegedly approved by the TCP Department.

He had alleged that both – Chief Minister Pramod Sawant and the then Deputy Chief Minister Babu Kavalekar were partners in this Rs 2,000 crore scam.

Further, the GFP president pointed out that Congress had also mentioned in its manifesto that if voted to power they will scrap Section 16B of the TCP Act.

“I still maintain that that Section16B was a scam,” he said adding that he had been consistently demanding to scrap it.